A note of personal disgust to Hillary Clinton's remarks concerning NAFTA in the Boston Globe:
"With NAFTA, Bill and Hillary Clinton really stuck it to rural America, Mudcat told me, though in slightly more graphic terms. So when Clinton visited the Globe this week I asked her about that charge...Clinton, however, wasn't about to get into a hissing match with a Mudcat. 'I understand politics, so I understand making charges, but I don't think the evidence is there to support that,' she concluded." Scott Lehigh's column, Boston Globe, October 12, 2007Is there anybody out there who would dare question that Hillary Clinton understands politics? I certainly do not. I have never, never heard, nor will I ever, ever say that the Clintons don't understand politics. Everybody on the planet knows they are the standard of measure in the practice of politics. So you just read her comment in the October 12 edition of The Boston Globe, "I don't think the evidence is there to support that." To highlight Hillary's impeccable understanding of politics, let's move back four days to her statement in USA Today for the supporting evidence (from the horse's mouth) on NAFTA's devastation to rural and blue-collar America.
"I think we do need to take a deep breath and figure out how we can make it (NAFTA) work for the greatest number of people," she told USA Today. Clinton said NAFTA's benefits have gone to the wealthy and cost jobs for working people. Susan Page, USA Today, October 8, 2007First, it is callous and offensive to the many Americans who have been "sucking wind" due to Clinton trade policies for Hillary to tell them "to take a deep breath." Secondly, Hillary, you want more "supporting evidence" other than your own statement? Top-tier economists, many who were tricked on these ill-thought, ill-negotiated, ill-enforced, and erroneously presented to Congress trade treaties, are now taking a second look themselves. Former Clinton official and Berkeley economist Brad DeLong, Clinton Treasury secretary Larry Summers, Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson, and a former vice chair of the Fed, Princeton's Alan Blinder, have all voiced strong concerns. Blinder has gone so far as to argue that off shoring and outsourcing of American jobs could ship away as many as 40 million jobs in the next two decades.
The reason Hillary is distancing herself from the trade treaties, rather than continuing to talk about ridiculous "unintended consequences," is because she "understands politics" like nobody else. In the early primary states, Iowa and South Carolina have lost twice as many jobs to NAFTA than they gained, and in New Hampshire, they have lost two-and-a-half times more jobs than they gained. The bottom line is that the Clintons did a number on small-town rural America and blue-collared workers everywhere. To get in tight with the big boys, they brokered a deal to trade local economies, jobs, and benefits (code word: healthcare) for Wall Street dividends. I think the greatest verifier to the validity of that last statement is on the cover of Fortune back in July. The headline over a posed shot of Hillary says "BUSINESS LOVES HILLARY! WHO KNEW IT?" I'll tell you who knows it. Many, many rural and blue-collared Americans know it. That cover is a perfect illustration as to why Hillary can not win the general election and why the collateral damage to the down ticket of her toxic coat-tails could cost us Congress. The question is not whether Hillary "understands politics," but instead, how many of us understand Hillary.
Our government is threatening other nations with
trade isolation if they do not ratify it. Talk
about strong arm tactics!
For me the overarching theme in the next series of elections will be about Balance - the Balance of Power and the Balance of various Rights. We are already talking about the right balance of power between the Executive and the Legislature. We're beginning to talk about the right balance between the need to collect intelligence and civil liberties. But we haven't even begun ... well maybe John Edwards and Andy Stern have ... to discuss the proper balance of power between the rights of global corporations and the rights of individuals.
At some point we are going to have to address the issue of Corporate Personhood, and the obscene imbalance it has helped to create that now lies between the rich and the rest of us, corporations and private individuals. The culture of Greed and Separation that has grown under the banner of the "Shock Doctrine" and "free enterprise" has created an astonishing level of misery for everyone - rich and poor.
And when the moment comes when we are willing to put this on the table, name it, and begin to deal, we will need someone in the White House who has not sold her soul to corporate interests years ago. I don't believe ... I wish I did ... that Hillary Clinton possesses either the wherewithal or the intention of ever buying her soul back.
If she is chosen as the Democratic candidate for President in 2008, I shall refrain from voting for the first time in decades. I won't resign from working for social justice in other ways, but I will reluctantly conclude that the Democratic Party has chosen to be a part of the problem and not a part of the solution ... and unworthy of any support.
You could not be more right. My wife and I are also sick and tired of having Hillary shoved down our throats. We simply refuse to join this well-funded 'cult of personality'.
We, too, will be forgoing our right to vote in 2008 if it comes down to Hillary and 'other'.
The investment elites who profit from globalization and the global auction for American jobs brought about by NAFTA back Hilary.A president who supports labor and the working class is their biggest nightmare
I hope we don't get lost in our conclusion that ANYBODY is preferable to someone like Bush and vote another one of Mammon's worshippers in.
(I'm in danger of getting religion through the back door of "Well I can't deny all the evil I'm seeing, so maybe they have something..." Except most of the evil seems to be coming from people that keep preaching religion.)
WAKE UP, PEOPLE!
Instead of reading or watching or listening to the moronic pundits of the MSM, it's time to consider the ongoing damage being done to this country by the corporate-friendly NAFTA and CAFTA bills signed into law by Hillary's husband, Bill.
At this very moment, you are sitting before the greatest informational tool ever devised by man...the computer. The knowledge you will need to make an informed decision is literally at your fingertips.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting - FAIR
MEDIA MATTERS
CorpWatch
The Guardian
The answers are all out there.
You need only care enough to look for them.
About time somebody threw some cold water on the Hillary conflagration.
you to buy a certain car and refuses to show you
why its a good buy, tells you you can't take it
to your own mechanic....well he's selling you a
load of crap. Works in politics too.
She's got Bush
She wants pow-wwwwer
Whoa whoa whoa
She's a laaa-ady
The "managed" part of "free trade" is where the corporations wield their power. Who do you think does the managing? You? Me? It's the corporations. When you do central planning of an economy, the people with the money and the power do the planning TO THEIR BENEFIT.
Our monetary/economic system, as it is, disempowers the poor and middle class and sereptitiously steals our money and transfers it to the wealthy. More government spending that requires more borrowing and creating money out of thin air only exacerbates the problem.
Our current system is unsustainable and we are on the verge of massive inflation which will completely destroy the middle class.
Oh well, I guess the Feds will just create a "jobs" program and make it all better.
She is the wife of a man who was successfully sued for sexual harassment (he paid out a settlement of over $800,000 because he knew he was going to lose) but she is running a gender based campaign as the champion of women. Thats the best example of the nonaccountability because NO ONE will raise it in the mainstream media.
Accountability is a concept with no value to the Clintons except to use against opponents.
RON PAUL wants to dismantle the corporatocracy and the military-industrial complex. I know a lot of Democrats don't want to admit it, but the D.C. Democrats are as much in the pocket of the corporations and defense industry as the Republicans are, and Hillary Clinton is one of the worst.
If we want to start putting power back in the hands of the people, I think it's gotta be a revolutionary-type president who wants to take a blowtorch to the power structure. I don't see any viable alternative other than Ron Paul.
Are Biden and Dodd so completely out of the picture? Why? Too mainstream..ie, electable?
Too loaded with baggage?..ie, experienced?
Too controversial?. so controversial they aren't even discussed??
Not controversial enough??
Are we just waiting for them to raise enough money so they can be taken seriously...then dismiss them for having raised too much money??
Full discloser; I like Biden. Many of my friends do, but all seem to imagine he has no chance. Why? Polls? Nobody has asked us??
the only one who has pledged to end nafta his first day. Also Kucinich is the only one who has a real unuiversal health care plan without insurance companies sucking up all the money, Obama is still seeking to keep insurance companies making money by denying coverage. Gee, think maybe thats why hes gotten so much insuance money.Kucinich is
the one with spine, balls and vision.
John Hofer
Hillary Clinton is (H.W.) Bush with lipstick.
The only way out of this hell is Kucinich or Paul. Everyone else (even Gravel, Edwards, and Gore, weep) is a globalist, an agent tasked to roll in what conspiracy theorists (and George H.W. Bush, Gary Hart, and hundreds among the elite) openly call the "New World Order:" One authoritarian (fascist) world government and one world currency. Ruled (yes ruled) by them, of course. That's what fascists do: RULE with no checks or balances.
Bill Clinton is on-board with the One World Government scam against the world's citizens. So is Hillary. Any CFR member, regardless of how well-meaning they may be - is in on the scam.
Kucinich and Paul are the only ones who are not.
She says that she now better understands how the system works. She certainly does. Spending a few hours one day following a nurse around does not equate to an understanding of the financial burden and the suffering those industries have put on the backs of the American people, whether they have insurance or not.
Working the system and working for the people are not the same. They are, in fact, mutually exclusive.